Posted on 12/07/2017 6:10:54 AM PST by SandRat
Local residents recall date that will live in infamy
SIERRA VISTA — Thomas Stoney Sr. still vividly remembers the paper that morning.
It was a copy of the News and Courier, a paper his older brother, Oliver, delivered in his hometown of Charleston, South Carolina. His father had it on the kitchen counter that Sunday morning, where Stoney could catch a glimpse of the shocking news splashed across the front page.
“The big headline: The Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, and it was an extra edition,” Stoney recalled Wednesday at his Sierra Vista home 76 years later.
At the time, Dec. 7, 1941, he was all of six years old — 21 days shy of turning 7, he pointed out. On that day that will live in infamy, his world, much like the entire country, was about to change.
In addition to the attacks, he also remembers the aftermath. His father and neighbors talking about their draft-age sons — sons who would be gone soon enough — and all the talk going around Sunday School that day was about the bombing and the country going to war.
The next day, the school gathered in an assembly to discuss the news and make sense of what was happened.
“I distinctly remember the principal standing in the auditorium saying ‘We didn’t see that coming,’” he said.
From there, Stoney’s next five years of school would be during wartime. He remembers being asked to contribute his lunch money to buy war bonds. They rationed white hominy grits. There were tire drives and victory gardens.
And then there was the fact that a portion of his grandparent’s property on John’s Island became a prisoner of war camp. So Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s oft-quoted description of the day has proven prophetic over the succeeding years, he said.
“It’s fresh in my mind,” Stoney said.
Harold Hinckley, another Sierra Vista resident, was 14 when the attack happened. He got the news through the radio station in the Greeley, Colorado. At the time, it seemed to him that the Japanese couldn’t inflict much damage on the U.S. forces, or that any conflict would last long. Both notions turned out to be untrue.
“I didn’t realize how much damage had been done at Pearl Harbor by those attacks,” he said.
Afterward, he said there was a strong feeling in the community that the country needed revenge. There was an expectation that eligible men should join the Armed Services, in each high school class young men were expected to enlist, Hinckley said.
He also saw an aftermath of a different sort. There were several Japanese families in the area where he grew up and he remembers them being shunned and treated with an air of suspicion following the attack.
But one thing is for certain, for people living at that time — or born that year — it’s something they never will forget, Hinckley said. And it will remain that way into the immediate future.
“It certainly will in my lifetime,” he said.
Ret SCPO RAISED THE COLORS AT 8 AM!
Baldderdash! The attack on Pearl Harbor occurred on a Sunday, so reports of it could not have appeared in a South Carolina newspaper that morning. The attack had not yet occurred when a South Carolina Sunday School was meeting that day.
I remain incredulous at the ignorance of journalists.
Remembering Pearl Harbor Day today.
And thanks to the men and women of the DoD in the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency and the Armed Forces Medical Examiner System in Hawaii who are working to identify the unknown dead from the USS Oklahoma such as the two sailors identified and brought home in the last month: http://www.star-telegram.com/news/local/community/arlington/article156870064.html
http://www.newscenter1.tv/story/36505698/south-dakota-sailors-remains-identified-buried-at-arlington
https://wtop.com/national/2017/12/100-killed-in-pearl-harbor-attack-identified-after-76-years/
Mr. Stoney said: “The big headline: The Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, and it was an extra edition,”
As an extra edition, it was probably a special evening edition of the morning newspaper that he remembers seeing 76 years ago. Also, back then, Baptist churches were likely to have had both Sunday morning AND Sunday evening services; thus it could be an evening Sunday school discussion he recalls.
Mr. Stoney said: “The big headline: The Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, and it was an extra edition,”
As an extra edition, it was probably a special evening edition of the morning newspaper that he remembers seeing 76 years ago. Also, back then, Baptist churches were likely to have had both Sunday morning AND Sunday evening services; thus it could be an evening Sunday school discussion he recalls.
Whoops, double post accident.
Baldderdash! The attack on Pearl Harbor occurred on a Sunday, so reports of it could not have appeared in a South Carolina newspaper that morning.The attack had not yet occurred when a South Carolina Sunday School was meeting that day.
The lovely Ms. Shark24 and I were in Hawaii back in Sept for a wedding and since she had never visited the Arizona memorial before, we spent a morning at the museum plus the shuttle to the Arizona. I can not recommend this visit highly enough to anyone visiting Oahu. The museum complex is very well done and a big upgrade from my last visit 30 years ago when I was in the USAF. It is a great reminder to all that although our adversaries are different, vigilance is still the word of the day. May God rest the souls entombed there and all those souls that have sacrificed all ( in this world anyway) to give us the incredible life we are able to pursue here in the USA.
We say “greatest generation” and I, with many others, actually belive it.
As a retired soldier, I’m humbled by the price they paid. I had one old friend, passed now, who had joined the Nacy out of high school but before the war began, before Dec 7, 41.
He was in for the duration plus.
That’s the case with that generation. They were in for the duration, some for 4 years and more.
Those of us who’ve endured the real difficulty of a one year deployment, and I’m not downplaying the very real cost of that sacrifice, stand in awe of those gone for 2, 3, and 4 years.
It’s just extremely humbling when we read about what they did, the price they paid.
Thank Almighty God for them
Now that I’m totally retired, I’m hoping/planning to finally take a trip to Hawaii and visit Pearl Harbor and all of the other military facilities there to see scars of Dec 7.
On all the Pearl Harbor threads today I’m inviting everyone to check out the 50-minute documentary my son made for his Eagle Scout Project about USS Arizona survivor Lou Conter. After Pearl Harbor, Mr. Conter went on to become a bomber pilot. Truly fascinating stories, and we’re very proud of the film. Available ad-free on You Tube. Find the link at witnesstoinfamy.com. Michael
I had missed that the newspaper was an extra edition,and, as you write, it could have been a special evening edition. The article does say that he saw the newspaper in the morning, but I concede that the timing of events remembered from 76 years ago, especially as he was six years old, should not be considered to be completely accurate.
I had forgotten the religiouososity of the Southern Baptists.
My father’s recollection of the event (he would have been fourteen years old then) was that someone breathlessly announced “Japs have bombed Pearl Harbor” to which someone else responded “What’s a Pearl Harbor?”
Thanks for the ping and your comment at post #5.
I was 5 at the time and remembering my brother taking me to the movies and telling me the news reels were going to show Pearl Harbor
I didn’t have any idea what he was talking about
But I remember the ensuing War years very well especially the airplanes flying over and when at the Jersey Shore you could hear the 50s going off as they practiced for air combat over the ocean
It was a heck of a day for my mother. She was celebrating her 21st birthday.
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